Sunday, March 4, 2012

Photography and Ethics

In Susan Sontags Regarding the Pain of Others she has changed her view from what she though previously, which was the idea that viewers of the news have been bombarded with images of war and devastation so much that we are now unaffected by the shock that these type of images are supposed to send us.  Sontag now believes that it isnt the fact that we are immune to these images but we often times do know what to do or how to help.  Sontag claims that "In a modern life- a life in which there is a superfluity of things to which we are invited to pay attention- it seems normal to turn away from images that simply make us feel bad." and this does not mean that people are responding less nor does it take away the ethical validity of these images.  These images are for us to question who is causing this to happen and is it excusable.  They are a reminder of what the human race is capable of doing.  Sontag then goes into talking about how no matter what these pictures were meant to be or represent if they end up in a gallery setting they merely become art.

I think this transformation that photography (which is supposedly documenting the truth) can do to a image is quite compelling.  One thing that I found to be extremely interesting in the essay by Ariella Azoulay was the story about Captain Jonathan Walker who was caught trying to smuggle slaves and his punishment for this was he would be branded with SS on his hand.  These two letters stood for "Slave Stealer" and would be meant to disgrace him.  Walker then went to a photography studio to photography this branding and the resulting photographs were then distributed to protest this branding.  The meaning of the SS was then transformed from a negative connotation to a more positive meaning of "Slave Savior".  This image, one of the first used for a political agenda completely transformed something that was meant to be a disgrace to a symbol of abolition.




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